Showing posts with label sporkful. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sporkful. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

No costume, no candy

This time of year, lots of candy statistics get tossed around. 35 million pounds of candy corn will be made this year. About one pound will be consumed in my house, one corn per day. The folks at Twix sent along some interesting tidbits to ponder.

According to their research, women prefer chewy treats more than men do (42 percent to 33 percent), while more men than women seek out treats with a crunch (33 percent to 23 percent). I don't know if I agree with that, but I did take a particular interest in the next statistic:

Nearly 7 out of 10 adults (69 percent) ages 18 to 24, and half of adults ages 25 to 34 said they would do it if they could. Trick-or-treating, that is. The only thing holding them back is dirty looks from the neighbors.

As I mentioned on my interview with The Sporkful, I love taking the Sugar Baby trick-or-treating. Heck, yes, I dressed him up when he was just a baby and strolled him around town looking for treats. I'm shameless that way, and so are many other parents. Sue me. 
I did mention, however, that I have a *special* bucket of leftover crap treats that I use for teenagers who call a baseball cap a costume. I freely admit that I've been known to clean out the pantry and collect all the granola bars, oatmeal packets, tea bags and raisin boxes that aren't going to be eaten and dole those out. I always thought that I was against trick-or-treating once you reached a certain age, say 17 or so. But the guys at The Sporkful made me realize that I'm not really an ageist, I'm a costumist. This was pretty revelatory to me. I feel empowered. So if you've got a costume, stop by my house on Halloween, even if you're 45 and don't have a kid in tow. I'll be giving out full-size Twix.

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Post-The Sporkful Interview: When things got really scary

Hopefully by now you've listened to The Sporkful podcast I mentioned in my previous post and you've become instant fans of Dan and Mark. (I dare you to listen to the egg sandwich episode and not stop at the deli tomorrow morning.) If you haven't heard it yet, take a 1/2 hour and give it a listen. Then come back and read the rest of this post in which I reveal to you what happened after the taping. I'll wait here.
***
Okay.
I went to bed that night full of nervous energy. I’m not a public speaker (if you couldn’t already tell), so I thought my nerves were all jangly over that. But then, suddenly! Terror raced through me! Ohmygosh … I realized that the Sugar Baby had never had a full-sized, four-fingered Kit Kat. I knew the challenge that lay before me.
The next day I went out and bought a Kit Kat. After I fed the Sugar Baby lunch and he was fully ensconced in Phineas & Ferb, I casually pulled it out of the pantry. “Hey,” I said, “check it out.”
His eyes grew when he saw, what very possibly might have been, the first non-Fun Size candy bar he’s ever had. “I can have it?” he asked. “The whole thing?”
“Yes!” I said, excitedly. “Your first big Kit Kat!” And then I got out the camera, as if I wanted to document this huge milestone in his life. Of course, what I was really doing was baiting him. I wanted to see what an unconditioned, un-candy-socialized soul would do with four connected Kit Kat fingers. And this, dear Yumsters, is what he did.

He bit into the whole thing. He grasped all four chocolate fingers at once and bit into them. Oh the humanity! I started laughing, not in a good way, but in an anxiety-ridden, holy crap kind of way. “Let me show you something,” I said, and pulled the bar from his grasp. “Look at these sections. Don’t you think it would be fun to break off each piece?” I asked.
He looked seriously ticked off. “No,” he said, and took the bar back. Eventually it split of its own accord, and that really aggravated him. 
 
Meanwhile, I was having a moment of my own, being transported back in time to that day at Grand Union when the little boy chomped on the Kit Kat and forever altered my world.
As I mentioned on The Sporkful, my own way of eating a Kit Kat is certainly not for everyone. (I believe Dan referred to it as "corn-cobbing.") It requires a certain level of patience and dexterity that I understand not everyone has. So then I was hit with a second blow. I was mentioning my typical Kit Kat attack plan to my Partner-In-Crime, and she said, “Well, that’s how I eat it, too.” WHAT? Now this was a shocker. I don’t understand how I’ve never seen her eat a Kit Kat and furthermore, I can’t believe she eats it the same way. We could’ve gone to our death beds and not known that we had this brilliant piece of confectionery minutiae in common.
Well, you know where this is all leading. I have to know how you eat a Kit Kat. Are there other four-finger biters out there? Or other deconstructionists? Tell me your technique and I’ll tell you all about yourself. A sort of fortune telling by Kit Kat strategy, if you will.  

The Sporkful talks Halloween candy

Hey Yumsters, I have a particularly sweet treat for you today. I had the honor of being a guest on The Sporkful, which, if you don't already know, is perhaps the most brilliant food podcast in existence. I mean, when you can do a whole show about ice and leave your audience wanting for more, you know you're doing something right.
Listen to it here.  (Episode 94: Halloween 2011).
This time, the hosts Dan Pashman and Mark Garrison dove deep into the multi-faceted world of Halloween candy. Their first guest, Gabe, wrote a manifesto about Halloween candy. I can't say I agree with all his proclamations, but he appears to be a kindred spirit. I talked about the correct way to eat a Kit Kat (or shall I say, the preferred method) and I name the most overrated and underrated Halloween candies. Check it out and then come back here later. I'm going to explain what happened after the show was taped and the incident that filled me with extreme shock and horror. You won't want to miss it.